Recently, 4 of us have been working on a shared bibilography – using a number of different tools.
For the actual referencing, we considered Mendeley, Zotero and EndNote Web for the shared area. Mendeley was the first one we tried, but it didn’t play as well with the multiple machines we had (Linux, Windows XP/7, iPad) – Zotero appeared to behave better. EndNote Web, while we could get accounts via the University, could have been difficult for sharing with others outside the uni at a later date; so it’s Zotero. As it is, we’re using it in different ways; some preferring the online version, others the browser plugin, while I like the standalone version.
We’d started putting the papers we’d found on a shared directory at work, though that was a little difficult due to the fact it’s possible, but not always easy to get to work directories off campus (especially on the multiple devices we have!) Dropbox has solved that problem; again, we can all use it in ways that suit us best, whether it’s a synchronised folder on the computer, via the website, or via a handheld device.
Now we have a work flow – Timothy is locating the papers, (and generating some nice mind maps of search terms, graphs of numbers of hits etc), while Jane, Jon and I are then reading, evaluating – and, if worth including returning to the original paper to add to the database. Two reasons for that – firstly It’s easier to add all the data automatically; zotero does the hard work, and secondly, the library databases recognise the extra hits & count them
We’re beginning to realise, though, the difficulties of a shared bibliography – and the need to agree on tags, rather than just select our own!
We’ve been doing this work at our secret hideout!
Have decided for papers that are a bit dated (say, 2004 or earlier) to start with Google Scholar & see what the citation rate has been since.
Zotero portable seems to be updated a little – now using the add by identifier always seems to work – (though the abstract isn’t picked up)